A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [60]
Rage howled and pealed through the forest on a blast of icy wind. Strain her eyes as she might, Dallandra could see nothing beyond the circle of torches. When the woman turned back, she was wearing the rough tunic again and hunting boots; the bow in her hands was drawn, a silver-tipped arrow nocked at the ready.
“Tell me our name, or we’ll hunt you through the forests like a beast, girl. You stink of the demon metal.”
What struck Dallandra the hardest was the irony of it, that she was going to die before Nananna, when all along she’d been bracing herself for her teacher’s death. The woman smiled, revealing long pointed teeth like a sprite’s. Dallandra tried to speak, failed, swallowed, and blurted the only answer she could think of.
“The Guardians.”
The woman laughed, the bow gone, her dress now of silk and a deep soothing blue.
“Right you are. Remember us.”
With a howl and an upflung arm she turned and plunged through the circle of torches. Whoever the others were, they laughed and howled and sang with her as the procession rushed off, as fast and smooth as if they floated above the ground. Perhaps they did. Dallandra was shaking too hard to speculate. She sank to her knees and trembled while the lights bobbed away, farther and farther, the song fading, the laughter only a sigh of wind: then gone. Finally Dallandra forced a few words through dry lips.
“I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
With one last convulsive shudder she looked around her and saw, sticking point down into the earth, an arrow. When she drew it out she heard the woman’s voice whispering from the wind.
“A gift for you. Remember.”
Dallandra ran all the way back to the comfort of the fire and the camp. Still shaking, still gasping for breath, she stammered out the story between gasps while everyone crowded round and passed the silver-tipped arrow from hand to hand.
“After all,” Wylenteriel remarked, “we’d better take a good look at it now, because it’ll probably turn into a twisted stick or something when the sun comes up.”
Only then did Dallandra remember all the old stories about the Guardians that she’d heard as a child, “fantastic tales for the little ones,” or so they’d always been called. Now she knew that in some measure at least they were true. Yet, when the sun came up on the morrow, the arrow was still an arrow, beautifully worked from some dark wood and fletched with blue feathers from, most likely, a jay. Dallandra took it in to show Nananna along with breakfast.
Nananna was slow to wake that morning. As she sat up, she plucked at the cushions with frail and clumsy fingers as if they annoyed her. For the briefest of moments she couldn’t remember her apprentice’s name. Dallandra felt tears spring to her eyes from fear as well as grief. She turned away and hid them.
“What’s this arrow?” Nananna’s voice was suddenly full again, and in control. “It’s got a dangerous dweomer upon it.”
“Dangerous?”
“Deadly to the likes of us, child. I can feel a destiny upon it. It will kill a shape-changer as he flies and turn his body to elven form, too, when he falls dying from the sky.”
“I didn’t know, Wise One, but truly, I never did trust the giver of it. A strange thing happened to me last night.”
When Dallandra started to tell the story, Nananna was all attention, but in a bit her mind seemed to drift away. She ran slow fingers over the polished shaft, then let it fall from her lap.
“Well, child, this puzzle is yours, not mine,” she said at last. “I … I know nothing of these things.”
The fear turned to a presence, cold and menacing behind her, as if a murderer had crept into the tent.
“Well, it probably doesn’t mean much.” Dallandra forced herself to sound brisk and cheerful. “Would you like some porridge? Namydd the merchant brought us some nice Eldidd oats the last time he came.”
Later, when she was alone, Dallandra wept for hours.
Just north of Cannobaen,